Purple Team Security Researcher - Associate

cobaltio; United States; Remote; USD 55,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity plan

Medical, dental, vision

401(k) plan

Paid time off

Parental leave

Job summary

Cobalt is seeking an Associate Security Researcher to bridge the gap between red and blue teams, focusing on understanding how defenses fail and how to protect them. This Purple Team role targets new security researchers with a solid sysadmin foundation.

You will build research environments, assist in threat simulations, collect data, and document findings while receiving mentorship to grow into a full security researcher role.

Qualifications

• Background in systems administration or IT operations.
• Security fundamentals with certifications such as Security+, CySA+, GSEC, or OSCP in progress.
• Understanding of the penetration testing lifecycle (recon, scanning, exploitation).
• US-based candidates only.
• Preference for EST or CST time zones.

Responsibilities

• Foundation & Infrastructure: set up research environments and labs, ensure tooling stability.
• Purple Team Collaboration: simulate threats and document detection gaps and improvements.
• Research Support: collect data, analyze logs, triage vulnerabilities for Senior Researchers.
• Documentation: maintain high-quality research docs, scripts, and internal wikis.
• Continuous Learning: grow from sysadmin tasks into deep offensive security research.
• Technical authorship and quality control of penetration testing findings and final reports.

Skills

Sysadmin background

Security fundamentals

Pentesting methodology

Automation tooling

Tools

Python

Bash

PowerShell

Job description

Cobalt is seeking an Associate Security Researcher to bridge the gap between red and blue teams, focusing on understanding how defenses fail and how to protect them. This Purple Team role targets new security researchers with a solid sysadmin foundation.

You will build research environments, assist in threat simulations, collect data, and document findings while receiving mentorship to grow into a full security researcher role.